The architectural distinctiveness of a house or other building is often attributable to the trim that provides a finishing touch to an otherwise common shape. Trim distinctiveness has, through the years, evolved from Greek, Roman, Gothic, and Victorian to contemporary and modernistic. Each style has various characteristic details and shapes that sets it apart from the others.
Parallel changes have come about through the development of building materials, especially those materials that form the visible surface of a house or building. Common exterior surface materials in use today are wood, brick, vinyl, and aluminum. Vinyl and aluminum have the advantage of being supplied from the factory with its final color applied, and need no more than minimum maintenance. With each of these exterior surface materials, the trim portions of the building, e.g., the crosshead piece over a door or window, the fascia below the roofline, the transition frieze, or molding, between a wall and ceiling, are almost always made of wood. The reason for wood being used for this purpose is that wood can be efficiently formed into attractive shapes that are distinctive to a particular style. Forming similar shapes of plastic requires complex molds, and shapes of metal or concrete have traditionally been heavy. Even where the exterior siding of a building is made of vinyl or aluminum, modem siding materials that are mass produced with their surface colors applied at the factory, the trim has generally been made of wood. However, wood has the drawback of requiring periodic maintenance in the form of scraping and painting to prevent degradation.
One known exception is a line of architectural trim products made of plastic resin from Style-Mark, Inc. of Archbold, Ohio. These known plastic trim products require substantial molding investment and capacity to produce, and involve either a substantial inventory or a significant delivery delay to obtain. In addition, in order to keep inventory within reason, these trim products are available in white only; if another color is desired, the parts must be painted at the construction site.
A process and apparatus exists for forming factory painted aluminum sheet into rain gutters. The aluminum is supplied in roll form and is drawn as a sheet through a mechanism having complementary convex and concave rollers to form the profile gutter shape. Forming aluminum rolled sheet into gutters at the site of installation has the advantage of permitting a seamless, continuous length of gutter to be installed across the entire edge of a house's roof, without the need to transport long gutter sections, e.g. 10 meter (39 feet), over the roads to the building site.
While forming aluminum sheet into gutters is known, the objective has been to achieve long, continuous sections, as described above. Furthermore, gutters are typically of a simple and functional cross sectional contour with an upwardly open channel. In the design of architectural trim products, a degree of flexibility is necessary since the style of the building will dictate the style and the width of the trim.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide an architectural trim product that can be economically produced in a variety of shapes and styles.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an architectural trim product that can be produced in a variety of colors without the need for painting at the construction site.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide an architectural trim product that does not require periodic maintenance.
These and other objects of the present invention will become apparent through the disclosure of the invention to follow.